In the climate of recession and cutback for the arts, the rivalry between London's two big opera companies grows ever keener. For a decade and more the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, grandly international, has been constantly attacked for its blinkered artistic policies and bungled productions. Star-studded they have often been, but regularly they have been compared unfavorably with the adventurous ones of English National Opera at the Coliseum down the road. Over the last year, however, the tide has turned, thanks in part to the work of the controversial general director, Jeremy Isaacs.

Covent Garden has been getting more than its share of praise. In the prestigious Olivier Awards this year, presented by the Society of West-End Theatre, Covent Garden swept the board in opera, both for nominations and the final award. By contrast, after a decade of glory the three men responsible for the bold policies of the English National Opera--music director Mark Elder, director of productions David Pountney, and general director Peter Jonas-- are all leaving simultaneously, presenting a question-mark for the future. In their place come a former television director, Dennis Marks, as general director and a talented woman conductor, Sian Edwards, as the new music director.

Yet to judge by the last few months, ENO remains the livelier place. David Pountney's new production of Janacek's Adventures of Mr. Broucek, in fact, went over the top in invenriveness, and Pountney received many brickbats for it. But the display of stage virtuosity matched this quirkiest of operas, and--most important of all--it didn't get in the way of the music. It was a diverting entertainment, and the musical component was strong. Sir Charles Mackerras conducted, and tenor Graham Clark (above left, with Bonaventura Bottone), sang and acted brilliantly in the title role. Particularly in Act One, satirizing artistic pretension among the moon-folk, Pountney's lively imagination exactly matched the choppy inventiveness of Janacek's restless score. The sequence where Mr. Broucek (literally, Mr. Beetle) arrives on the moon and lands in the garden of the lunar artist brought a delectable send-up of David Hockney, with Stefanos Lazaridis's designs making a Hockney pond into a trampoline.

About the same time, ENO unveiled Ken Russell's production of Gilbert and Sullivan's Princess Ida, the least appreciated of the G&S canon, and the overkill in James Merifield's designs was horrific. The theme of Britain reduced to a theme-park with Prince Charles's ears as a logo on everything (including guardsmen's bearskins and Buckingham Palace itself) was well advertised in advance, but its jokiness was relentless. The evening seemed rather like an overlong circus procession. At least the production demonstrated how many deliciously pointed numbers Sullivan's score contains, with his inspired orchestration restored from the original manuscript. Jane Glover was the lively conductor, and the cast of women was strong, including Rosemary Joshua in the title role, giving Verdian pathos to the Princess's Act Three aria. Anne Collins was Lady Blanche and Anne-Marie Owens was Lady Psyche, the latter in thigh boots fondly wielding her whip.

There was sly updating yet again in ENO's new production of Donizetti's Don Pasquale, and Rosemary Joshua (pictured opposite with Tom Marty and Howard Belgard) was again outstanding as the heroine. Fortunately--with the central character as chairman of Pasquale Holdings in Rome--the inventiveness hardly ever got in the way of the music. Which is more than can be said for David Alden's production of Handel's Ariodante. Nicholas McGegan conducted, commendably without cuts, but hardly a moment went by without distracting stage business dragged in to fill what Alden evidently thought were dramatic longueurs.

Over the last few seasons, ENO has commissioned and presenting a series of new operas, most notably Harrison Birtwistle's thorny but unforgettable Mask of Orpheus. The fifth and latest in the series, Jonathan Harvey's Inquest of Love, comes far closer to dramatized oratorio than to opera. Under the old team of David Pountney as producer and Mark Elder conducting--collaborating for the last time before their departure--the ENO company did Harvey proud. The composer wrote his own libretto with the help of David Rudkin, developing a story of characters reaching the afterlife. Themes include the nature of suffering, of reality itself, of love, jealousy, redemption, and the subconscious, with echoes of such lofty models as Zauberflote and Parsifal, not to mention Tippett's operas. For all Harvey's high ambitions, the characters are mere cardboard. Noisy with electronics and percussion, the music is yet very approachable, plainly written with intense feeling. Even so, it is hard to share its emotions in this setting. A strong cast was led by Peter Coleman-Wright, Linda McLeod, and Helen Field.

Next to this gallery of novelties, the new productions at Covent Garden have been few, and one of those--Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande, with Claudio Abbado drawing magical sounds from the orchestra--was borrowed from the Vienna State Opera. For Covent Garden the late Antoine Vitez's production was restaged by Lorenzo Mariani, with the striking designs of Yannis Kokkis at once clean-cut and dream-like. The casting was strong: Frederica von Stade still fresh and girlish as Melisande, Francois Le Roux honeyed as Peileas, and Victor Braun--a late substitute for Ruggero Raimondi--a powerful, incisive Golaud.

Equally welcome at Covent Garden was the first British professional staging of Verdi's Stiffelio, with José Carreras in the title role and Sir Edward Downes conducting his own newly prepared edition. Verdi scholar Julian Budden has dubbed it "the most unjustly neglected of all Verdi's operas"; and Downes's inspired, urgent direction, helped by Elijah Moshinsky's production, did much to sustain that estimate. With realistically detailed, ceilinged sets by Michael Yeargan, the opera was imaginatively updated from early 19th Century Salzburg to the American farm belt later in the century. That gave new sharpness to a plot centering on a married protestant pastor whose wife is unfaithful. Stiffelio's inner conflict, when he discovers his wife's infidelity, between his emotions as a man and as a pastor is the more involving when put in the context of a strait-laced protestant community such as we know well from films.

Stiffelio may lack melodies that send you away humming, (though its overture is full of early Verdian rum-ti-tum), yet, dating from just before Rigoletto, it offers a fascinating insight into the composer's complex musical and emotional character. José Carreras in the title role was in fuller and firmer voice than on any of his previous returns to London since his recovery from leukemia. The American soprano Catherine Malfitano made an equally striking and sympathetic figure, singing warmly in her big solos with bright, clear tone.

As memorable as any of the Royal Opera House's own productions was the presentation at Covent Garden by Welsh National Opera of one of the company's latest Wagner productions, Tristan und Isolde. It was particularly welcome because, apart from Gotz Friedrich's depressing, tunnel-bound production of the Ring cycle, there has been a complete dearth of Wagner there for years. Cheekily, WNO--with a budget only a fraction of Covent Garden's--presented the debut at the Royal Opera House of a singer who has been scandalously neglected there, the Welsh soprano Anne Evans, who was the distinguished Brunnhilde in the last Bayreuth production of the Ring.

While Sir Charles Mackerras drew ravishing sounds from the WNO Orchestra, Act Two brought a performance from her that in its sheer beauty, its richness of tone and firmness of line, far outshone anything the current loud ladies of the Wagnerian scene can offer--Eva Marton and Hildegard Behrens please note. It was a real Welsh line-up: Evans was matched by Della Jones, who gave a performance as Brangaene comparably firm, rich, and well focused, creating a touching, three-dimensional portrait of a character who can easily fade into the background. As Tristan, Jeffrey Lawton was not quite in this league, but inevitably, today, one asks--who is? Despite unevenness, he hit notes cleanly, and brought none of the usual unpitched barking. In addition there was an outstanding young Kurwenal from America, Richard Paul Fink, displaying a full, firmly projected baritone, and a King Mark, Peter Rose, who brought out the noble lyricism of his long Act Two monolog. Visually, the production of Yannis Kokkis was hampered by its frame within a frame, the outer one like a television screen, the inner one an unrelenting picture-mount oblong. Yet it had the great advantage of bringing the principal singers well forward.

After the glories of Tristan und Isolde, the other Welsh offering at Covent Garden fell sadly short. The production of Donizetti's La Favorira (in the original French) did nothing to prevent the bones from showing in this melodramatically contrived tale of a king's mistress and a hero's honor. Without fine Italianate voices and good tunes for them to sing, it was a depressing event, even if the big ensembles went well. In those, at least, the WNO, with its fine choral tradition, came into its own, rallied by music director Carlo Rizzi.

In a summer when Glyndebourne was ringing to the sound not of music but of builders (the new opera house is scheduled to be completed for May 1994), the Festival Hall in London provided the company a temporary home. There was no staging, but the concert performances were presented with flair. Berlioz's Beatrice et Benedict--as intractable dramatically as it is scintillating musically--came with a narration written and performed by John Wells, much in the style of the one he wrote for the concert performances of Bernstein's Candide at the Barbican in 1989, one of the great London events of the last decade. In his Berlioz narration Wells's humor was extreme at times, but it was far preferable to acres of sub-Shakespearean dialog in French, with a plot that Wells described fairly enough as "More Ado about Even Less". Under Andrew Davis at his most effervescent, with the London Philharmonic in sparkling form, the result was pure delight. The cast was headed by Anne-Sofie von Otter and Jerry Hadley; Dawn Upshaw and Jean Rigby provided splendid support as Hero and Ursule. Some of Berlioz's most delectable numbers are the ones that have the least connection with the plot, but with Wells to put them in surreal context one could relish the hushed beauty of both the duet for Hero and her companion, Ursule, which concludes Act One, and the even lovelier trio in Act Two when they are both joined by Beatrice.

The other Glyndebourne opera, Beethoven's Fidelio, was beset with cancellations. Not only did Klaus Tennstedt withdraw at the last minute because of illness, but there were no fewer than four sopranos who at various times were scheduled to sing the role of Leonore. With Tennstedt gone, Roger Norrington, chosen to pick up the pieces, gave a strong, cleancut reading, predictably influenced by period performance, with the Act One quartet lightly done at a fast-flowing tempo. The original, exciting choice for Leonore was Julia Varady, but in the end we had Carol Yahr, due to make her debut at the Met next year in this very role. Hers is a powerful soprano, but the vibrato is obtrusive, and in the Festival Hall--not easy for voices--the sound was harsh. In happy contrast, Barbara Bonney made a fresh, girlish Marzelline, well matched by the honeyed tenor of John Mark Ainsley as Jaquino. Peter Seiffert was a clear-toned Florestan, best at full belt.

A more memorable Beethoven event came a few weeks earlier, when at the very last minute Maria Joao Pires, due to play the Fourth Piano Concerto with the Philharmonia, was taken ill. John Eliot Gardiner agreed to conduct a Beethoven symphony instead, without rehearsal. At 7:15 p.m., with only a quarter of an hour to go, they didn't even know which symphony they would be playing. It all depended on which orchestral parts could be found. No. 7 was the one that arrived, a minefield of repeats, yet with everyone determined to succeed against impossible odds (and thanks to the charisma of Gardiner), it was a triumph, the sort of coup you might have expected a Beecham or a Stokowski to pull off. The wonder was that the interpretation was the very opposite of safe or conventional. Even more strikingly influenced by period performance than Norrington's Fidelio, speeds were exceptionally fast. That the result was not merely hectic but exhilarating owed much to Gardiner's gift to spring rhythms and to draw out subtleties of expression-even impromptu--with his fluent left hand.

The AIDS-inspired Symphony No. 1 of John Corigliano was first heard in London last year, given by Daniel Barenboim and the Chicago Symphony on their European tour. But it was left to the Young Musicians Symphony Orchestra to present it for the first time with British players. The result was a Festival Hall performance under James Blair that outshone even the Chicagoans in passionate commitment. The YMSO consists of young professionals, who after graduating take part in concerts partly as a pastime. This meant that the very large orchestra that Corigliano asks for--daunting for one of the cost-conscious front-line London orchestras was readily available for the YMSO. Never afraid of a fortissimo, Blair and his team, very well rehearsed, built climaxes of shattering power.

The visit of the New York Philharmonic to London amply confirmed reports of how Kurt Masur--steeped in the German Kapellmeister tradition--has transformed the orchestra, giving it a totally new sound; he himself also seems transformed from his Leipzig self. For generations Europeans have tended to think of the New Yorkers as a loud and brashly American band; now it was universally noted how Masur has given the strings in particular a new refinement, a new restraint. Not that the close of the second concert was a time for restraint. Masur after the first encore addressed the audience. As a second encore, he said, the orchestra would play the overture to Bernstein's Candide. "But as no one can replace Lenny, I go now!" He left, and with a sweep of the bow from the concertmaster, the players set off on their own. If the sound was at once brasher than with Masur in charge, that was totally appropriate for this most effervescent of overtures.

Copyright © 1993 Record Guide Productions.